i33 



THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 



AND THE 



APPEAL TO POSTERITY 

BY 

JOSIAH PHILLIPS QUINCr 



THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 



AND THE 



APPEAL TO POSTERITY 



BY 



JOSIAH PHILLIPS QUINCY 



[RlCl'lilNTED FROM Tllli PliOCKlODlNGS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HiSTOUICAL 

Society, November, 1903 ] 



CAMBRIDGE: 
JOHN WILSON AND SOX. 

Sanibcvsitg ^Eirrss. 
1903. 



an 



THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE. 



In an American city recentl}' conspicuous before the world 
for what is corrupt and disheartening in democratic govern- 
ment at the present stage of its evolution, we are about to 
celebrate the purcliase of the vast territory once known as 
Louisiana. The treaty with France by which this exten- 
sive domain was added to the confederated States which 
had chosen Thomas Jefferson as their chief magistrate, was 
lauded — I may say officially lauded — in that city not many 
months ago. It is soon to be celebrated with yet more mag- 
nificence. The glory that has come to us from this extension 
of the Union will doubtless be contrasted — as it has already 
been contrasted — with the unpatriotic objections of certain 
"little Americans" (so an official personage recently called 
them) who asserted that the violation of the Federal Consti- 
tution embodied in the treaty with France was wrong in prin- 
ciple and likely to prove disastrous in outcome. That the 
Constitu.tion, as it then stood, was violated has been admitted 
by men whose competency in judgment cannot be denied. 

President Jeiferson and his Secretary of State, James Madi- 
son, one of the framers of the great compact, head the list. 
Their names can easily be followed by those. of eminent states- 
men and publicists. One of Thomas Jefferson's biographers 
is constrained to admit that in this matter "the Executive 
authority had to be stretched until it cracked." And our as- 
sociate Mr. Morse in his admirable life of the third President 
disposes of the subject after this fashion : " The Government 
was without Constitutional authority to make the purchase 
upon terms which substantially involved the speedy admission 
of the new territory in the shape of new States to the Union." 



Somewhat conspicuous among other remonstrants was 
Josiah Quincy, a representative from this State to that Con- 
gress when it was decided to carry out the most objectionable 
provision of the treaty with France by admitting Louisiana as 
an equal with the States which had agreed to unite for certain 
purposes under a general government. Alluding to his pro- 
test against the violation of the contract which established the 
Union, Mr. Quincy said : " By this people and by the event if 
this bill passes, I am willing to be judged whether it be not a 
voice of wisdom." 

A hundred years have passed since the Louisiana purchase, 
and by the voices most in evidence Mr, Quincy's remonstrance 
is judged and condemned. Condemned also is the approval 
of his friend John Lowell who assured the congressman that 
his warning of evil to come from the admission of States to 
the Union, otherwise than by the means prescribed by the 
Constitution, would do him " more credit with posterity " than 
anything he had ever done. Well, posterity has arrived — 
— that is, an infinitesimal portion of it — and with resonant 
periods of rhetoric supported by din of drum and cannon, it is 
ready to dishonor the draft that Mr. Lowell drew upon it. 

It is an acknowledged function of an historical society to sit 
as a court of appeal competent to reverse the hasty judgments 
passed by contemporaries upon some memorable event. Its 
jurisdiction may be stretched somewhat further. I think it 
may question the decisions of any of the ever-increasing se- 
quence of posterities — even of that one among them which 
happens to be clamorous in its immediate environment. 

There are two ways of regarding history. We are some- 
times told — oftener to-day than ever before — that the turns 
and twists in its turbid stream simply register the results of 
cosmical and biological conditions, and that it is inconceivable 
that it should liave run in other channels than those it actually 
filled. When told that we must so regard the rushing flood 
that has landed us upon this bank and shoal of time where for 
a moment we are permitted to stand, I can command no logic 
to show the determinist that he is wrong. On the contrary, 
he can annihilate me with legitimate deductions from the pro- 
nouncements of Science and- Theology — not less from the 
teachings of Darwin and Haeckel, of Bain and Maudsley, than 
from those of the great theologians Augustine, Calvin, Ed- 



wards. He can leave me no resource but to change the 
"Credo quia impossibile est" of Tertullian into Credo tayi- 
quam impossibile est — and so make an end of it. 

I shall assume that all here present agree with these words 
of the late Lord Acton quoted with approval by Mr. Biyce : 
" It is the office of historical science to maintain morality as the 
sole impartial criterion of men and things." Otherwise we 
might well follow the example of the ancients and erect altars 
to Fortune as the only discernible director of human affairs. 
An historical tribunal can by no means adopt the word "patri- 
otism " as a summary of the whole duty of man. It should be 
free from the bias of nationality. To say that an act must 
meet its approval because it tended to the aggrandizement of 
a people occupying a given division of the earth's surface is 
quite beside the mark. The only question to be considered is 
whether a direction of history, initiated by this or that respon- 
sible human act, was clearly a beneficent factor in the evolu- 
tion of our race towards those moral and social altitudes which 
it is pleasant to assume man is destined to attain. If it is 
decided that this was the case, then those who opposed that 
act must be held up for censure as examples of short-sighted- 
ness, captiousness, and error. 

I propose to say a few words in mitigation of the sentence 
hastily passed upon those Massachusetts men who were op- 
posed to the provision of the treaty with France which re- 
sulted in the admission of the State of Louisiana — to its 
admission without the restriction prohibiting slavery which 
under the Ordinance of 1787 had been applied to the north- 
western territory which Congress had been permitted to divide 
into States. 

Of Thomas Jefferson, the most picturesque figure in our line 
of Presidents, — tliough some might except the present incum- 
bent of that office, — I need say little. I have heard him pre- 
sented from the sombre point of view of Federalists who were 
his contemporaries, and we all know the honeyed emulsions 
with which his biography has been administered to the readers 
of Parton and Watson. No one can doubt our indebtedness 
to him as a great phrase-maker. He has left us sentences 
which embody ideals fit to be held aloft for the contemplation 
of his countrymen, and which should spur them to an ever- 
increasiug effort to embody them in conduct. I think it would 



6 

be difficult to improve upon Hamilton's characterizHtion of at 
least one side of this fascinating personality : " A man of sub- 
limated and paradoxical imaginations." Sublimated, in its 
figurative sense of pure and refined, many of these imagina- 
tions certainly were ; that some of them were paradoxical is 
evident from the most cursory examination of what he has left 
us. One of the most stimulating of Jefferson's sayings gave 
his views respecting the qualifications for office in this repub- 
lic. The competency of tlie applicant was to be determined 
by the affirmative answer to three questions : " Is he honest, 
is he capable, is he faithful to the Constitution ? " Upon as- 
suming the duties of his great office the President makes oath 
that to the best of his ability he will " preserve, protect, and 
defend the Constitution of the United States." President Jef- 
ferson by his own confession was unfaithful to the Constitution. 
He admitted that he had "no right to double and more than 
double the area of the United States " under the conditions 
stated in the treaty with France. That act was condemned 
by the legislature of Massachusetts as well as by her promi- 
nent citizens. It has been applauded by more numerous 
voices. Its admirers have likened it to the action of a trustee 
who exceeded the restrictions of the deed of trust in order to 
make an investment greatly to the advantage of its benefi- 
ciaries. I can neither admit that this comparison fits the case, 
nor that a trustee would be excusable who so disregarded his 
instructions. Yet I am not disposed to deny that occasions 
are conceivable when not only the law of the land but the most 
imperative of the Ten Commandments might be rightly put 
aside. Such a case was given in the newspapers some years 
ago. As the result of a railroad accident, a man was lying in 
agon}' — his legs crushed and held by the engine which had 
fallen upon him. Flames that could not be extinguished were 
rapidly approaching. The sufferer asked a by-stander to re- 
lieve him from prolonged and useless torture by a bullet from 
a pistol. I dare not say that some insignificant man in the 
street would have done wrong by complying with that pa- 
thetic petition. But how if the request had been to one of 
high and conspicuous position, — to the governor of the State 
or to the chief justice of its court? Then it should never 
have been granted. Why? We may read the answer, good 
for all time, in the Shakespearian drama. When it was urged 



that the officials of the Venetian court should wrench the law 
to their authority and so do a great right by doing a little 
wrong, the representative of the learned jurist of Padua gives 
no uncertain rebuke to the proposal. And the answer was 
not unworthy of the learned jurist of England who by some 
persons, not altogether demented, is believed at times to have 
uttered himself through the player at the Globe Theatre, 

" 'T will be recorded for a precedent ; 
And many an error, by the same example, 
Will rusli into the State : it cannot be." 

The admission of Louisiana, by means not sanctioned by the 
Constitution, was recorded for a precedent, and many an error 
by the same example has rushed into the State. Mr. Quincy 
did not live long enough to see his country expanding by 
aggressive war in Asiatic islands, but he did live long enough 
to be satisfied of the wisdom of his remonstrance. The deeds 
of one generation largely influence the ideas of the next : they 
control its thought. And " this humdrum politician " (so he 
has recently been called) was confirmed in his belief that 
such specious and temporary gain as may be reached by dis- 
respect to organic law must be paid for by a loss that will far 
exceed it. He lived to see this violation of the Constitution 
pass into a tradition ; and the history of Church and State has 
been read to little purpose if we do not know that an accepted 
tradition sooner or later secures confirmation by authority. 
And so it has come to pass that the Supreme Court has decided 
that Jefferson and Madison and their eminent contemporaries 
were altogether wrong in supposing that the Louisiana pur- 
chase was without constitutional justification, for behold that 
elastic instrument can be stretched to sanction acquisition of 
territory by conquest as well asJayi purchase or^ treaty. Con- 
gress has been lifted above all courts and constitutions, and 
may deny to our dependencies even the right of trial by 

jury- 
/ It goes without saying that the Supreme Court, being a 
human and fallible tribunal, is not uninfluenced by its con- 
gressional environment and b}^ the returns of the elections. 
It was only the other day that Professor Nelson, the well- 
known publicist, made himself responsible for the following 
statement : " One of the justices of the United States Supreme 



Court has declared that he will determine questions of law 
with what he regards as the drift of public sentiment." And 
I think we may safely add that this accommodating magistrate 
would be likely to determine this compulsive " drift " accord- 
ing to the wishes of party leaders who happen to be in the 
ascendant. Let me not be misunderstood ; constitutions 
develop themselves and ought to do so. The framers of our 
Constitution recognized this and devised a way in which they 
thought it could be prudently done. We have chosen to 
develop our organic law by the familiar process by which 
statute law has been developed. We know that the courts 
extend and modify what was clearly the intention of the legis- 
lator, and that statute law is constantly growing by these 
decisions. But is it well to develop a carefully written con- 
stitution, which provides a means for its amendment, in the 
same way ? Evidently the answers to that question may show 
divergence of opinion. 

To go back to 1811. Whitney's saw-gin was invented in 
1793, and the slave States of America were recognized as the 
cotton fields of the world. Political decisions result from 
a medley of mixed motives ; and of some of the most active 
of these motives it is desirable that nothing be said. The 
art of the politician selects and proclaims that one among 
them which is most presentable. The concealed motive in 
the treaty with France was to forward the supremacy of the 
slave-holding power. The shrewd and capable leaders, whom 
the South has never lacked, saw that here was an opportunity 
to place their institution in an impregnable position. They 
realized that the indefinite continuance of slavery depended 
upon spreading their peculiar property, with its privilege of 
three-fifths representation, over as wide an area as possible. 
This they saw ; and Josiah Quincy, and the good and true 
men who stood behind him, saw it as clearly as they did. 

Whether the expansion of wh^t we are proud to call Ameri- 
can institutions is desirable was not then the question. The 
question was whether the expansion of slavery was a function 
that the States, had delegated to a passing Congress and a 
passing Executive. I have talked with Mr. Quincy about his 
position at this time and feel sure that I give it correctly. 
Whether the purchase of territory that included the Missis- 
sippi River was constitutional or not, he never doubted that 



9 

the States would ratify and confirm it. He was satisfied that, 
had the appeal been made to them, the States might have 
admitted Louisiana even without the provision looking to 
the extinction of slavery, which had been applied to other 
territorial possessions. But they would have done this as 
a concession to an extraordinary situation never again likely 
to occur : the mouth of the Mississippi was an asset that could 
not be duplicated. It was the assumption, cunningly incor- 
porated in the treaty, that Congress might make the slave 
power predominant in the Union by multiplying States in 
foreign territories, that aroused his indignant opposition. 
There was the dead fly in the ointment of the apothecary which 
it needs no Scripture to assure us must soon become unpleas- 
antly evident. What has been absurdly called " the envenomed 
anti-expansion sentiment " of Mr. Quincy culminated in lan- 
guage frequently quoted in the histories and cyclopsedias. 
He advanced the opinion that with the unconstitutional admis- 
sion of the Louisiana " the bonds of this Union are virtually 
dissolved ; that the States which compose it are free from their 
moral obligations ; and that as it will be the right of all, so it 
will be the duty of some, to prepare definitely for a separation 
— amicably if they can, violently if they must." He thus 
asserted the indefeasible right of resisting acts that were 
plainly unconstitutional ; it was the right certainly indicated 
by Jefferson in the resolutions he drew for the Kentucky 
legislature as early as 1798. It was the right conceded by 
John Quincy Adams, provided it was exercised under the 
sanction of conscience and in the fear of God. It was a right 
implied even by the great " Defender of the Constitution," 
when he uttered the obvious truism, " A bargain cannot be 
broken on one side and still bind on the other." 

Massachusetts had accepted the Union as a compact between 
independent sovereign states. If there was any taint of 
treason in the situation, its stigma was upon those who by 
the usurpation of undelegated power had pushed the issue of 
the extension of slavery to the front. And at the front it 
remained, ever alert and aggressive, until the repeal of the 
Missouri Compromise and the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska 
bill aroused a political party to resist its encroachments. 

Whether secession from the Union was a reserved right of 
the States has been debated on each side by men equal in up- 



10 

Tightness and ability. The question was decided at Appomat- 
tox Court-House, and there is no appeal. Those who lived 
through the Civil War know how odious the doctrine of this 
reserved right could be made to appear. And those who 
believe, as I do, that resistance to it was then laudable as 
favoring the moral progress of man, shudder to remember how 
near to success came the attempt to divide the Union in the 
interest of slavery. As we read the chapters of history that 
give the facts of that terrible struggle, they seem like cliapters 
of accidents. While there is all the virtue in an "if" that 
Touchstone ascribed to it, there are possibilities in that familiar 
particle from which We shrink in dismay. 

If Prince Albert had died a few weeks earlier leaving un- 
modified the offensive terms in which Palmerston demanded 
satisfaction for the action of Captain Wilkes ! If the exigen- 
cies of politics had sent a man of less wisdom and discretion 
than Mr. Adams to represent us in England ! If a sudden 
hoarseness had prevented Henry Ward Beecher from going 
up and down that land and holding the working classes from 
following the lead of the aristocracy ! How easily these and a 
hundred other " ifs " might have confirmed the expectation 
of the South that European intervention would stop the war. 
But there is one "IF" that we may well write in capitals, for 
it dominates all the others. If there had been no great moral 
question involved, or if the moral issue had been the other 
way, the secession of those eleven States would have suc- 
ceeded — and ought to have succeeded. Suppose they could 
truly have asserted that their industrial interests had been 
paralyzed by a tariff of doubtful constitutionality — a tariff 
imposed with no view to revenue but to enrich certain favored 
classes in other States — think you that men of intellect and 
conscience like Mill and Cairnes, John Bright and Labouchere, 
would have stood as a barrier to hold back the sordid interests 
that were anxious to crush us ? What we call " the rebellion " 
was unsuccessful because the moral sense of the nations (with 
which their selfish rulers had to reckon) had reached a degree 
of enlightenment capable of perceiving that even if slavery 
could still be tolerated the time had passed when it could be 
encouraged. This position, held in 1861 by the general con- 
sensus of mankind, had been reached by Josiah Quincy and 
his friends in 1811, just fifty years before. 



11 

President Jefferson has been extolled for his supposed fore- 
sight in getting possession of the West ; I submit that there 
was also foresight in the men who perceived the disaster that 
must come from an unconstitutional concession to the slave 
power — though I cannot claim that their imaginations were 
powerful enough to picture the horror of the consequences 
that subsequent history reveals. 

I have implied that to obtain in clarified essence the lessons 
of the past it is not enough to divest ourselves of passion, of 
prejudice, of partisanship ; we must also stifle the uplifting 
emotion of patriotism. The French historians are fond of con- 
sidering what course history would have taken if something 
that unexpectedly happened had not stopped the way. And 
though I cannot for a moment admit the preposterous suppo- 
sition that but for the treaty with France we should have lost 
the West, it may be permitted for a moment to enter the fairy- 
land of conjecture and assume that the fear of the time was 
realized and that England had gained possession of it. We 
know that the mother country was eager to plant herself upon 
this territory of uncertain limits. Napoleon's motive for sell- 
ing was that the British fleet in the Gulf of Mexico stood ready 
to pounce upon it the moment war with France was declared. 
The London press was clamorous for its acquisition. Even 
up to the time of the battle of New Orleans, England had not 
relinquished her desires in this direction. If the treaty of 
peace had not been signed and the battle had gone the other 
way, Sir Edward Pakenham was provided with men of expe- 
rience in civil affairs competent to govern the lands he hoped 
to acquire. Militant patriotism cannot contemplate the pos- 
sibility of such a catastrophe without a shudder. But can the 
unbiassed student of history be so easily persuaded that a 
disaster to humanity would have come of it ? Such an in- 
quirer might remember that in 1832 the British Parliament 
voted a hundred millions of dollars to get rid of slavery in 
Jamaica, and that this was followed by its abolition through- 
out the British dominions. Knowing that the presidents of 
our universities are sober men not given to exaggeration of 
speech, he might recall the words addressed by one of them 
to the graduates of the present year. These j^oung men were 
reminded that they were citizens of a country " strangely 
lenient toward political venality and civic corruption. We 



12 

have seen great cities held in the grasp of self-appointed bosses 
and rural regions bought and sold in unblushing defiance of 
law." Possibly one might call to mind the language of that 
sterling American citizen, Dorman B. Eaton, who after due 
examination was forced to acknowledge that " England has 
brought about changes which have elevated the moral tone of 
her official life . . . while this great work has been going on 
in the mother country, we have fallen away from the better 
methods of our earlier history." The inquiry might be raised 
whether the average of human well-being in the British com- 
monwealths, Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, was decidedly 
less than with us. Some of these great States have attacked 
economic problems before which we stand dazed and helpless ; 
from them we have borrowed two of the best of our recent 
acquisitions, the Australian ballot and the system of land 
registration. While England and her dependencies are far 
enough from being the ideal states that we hope for in the 
future, can it be asserted that their progress in that direction 
has been far less than our own ? 

The last legislature of Massachusetts increased the burden 
of her debt-laden people by contributing one hundred thousand 
dollars to the splendor of the celebration at St. Louis. Let us 
not forget that this same Massachusetts once declared by its 
legislature that Jefferson's treaty with France transcended the 
constitutional power with which Congress had been entrusted, 
and reaffirmed this belief as late as 1845 by declaring that 
" the project of the annexation of Texas unless arrested on the 
threshold, may drive these States into a dissolution of the 
Union." Robert C. Winthrop, her representative in Congress 
and for so many j^ears the honored President of this Society, 
expressed the feeling of his constituents in these words : " I 
deny the right of this government to annex a foreign state by 
any process short of an appeal to the people in the form which 
the Constitution prescribes for its amendment." 

I do not object to the appropriation for the St. Louis fes- 
tival. It is pleasant to be captured by the spectacular, and 
perhaps there is too little of it in our common American life. 
Only a few fragments of history stick in the general memory, 
and it is easy to fashion these to any shape that raaj' be thrust 
into the foreground of consciousness. It is easy to forget that 
organic law is the basis not only of order but of moral prog- 



13 

ress, and that after one compromise with principle there is no 
foothold in the descent. For the evil of such a compromise 
gradually increases until it becomes incorporated with our 
lives ; and then we accept it as we accept the natural forces of 
the Cosmos by which we exist or cease to be. It is true, as 
Hamlet says, that " our indiscretion sometimes serves us 
well " ; but it will always serve us ill if, dazzled by the splen- 
dor of its supposed consequences, we forget that it was indis- 
cretion and call it by some better name. 

There is good cause for much of the exultant patriotism that 
will be in evidence at the St. Louis Exhibition. Despite past 
errors and some present discouragements, the outlook towards 
the future justifies an invigorating hopefulness. The natural 
laws of economics are realized as never before, and civic duty 
was never put so near to the front of human obligations. Let 
the orators raagnif}' those responsible for the Louisiana pur- 
chase, if this the occasion demands. But if they follow a not 
unusual procedure and stigmatize as " envenomed anti-expan- 
sionists," and credit with " a narrow parochialism," the Massa- 
chusetts men who opposed the unconstitutional creation of 
new slave States, I believe that competent students of history 
will respond with the Scotch verdict, " Not Proven." 



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1/ i 



